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The Must-Take Test Automation Approach

Your test automation approach and metrics should make you feel good about yourself. They are supposed to let you know what is working well within your software development process and what needs improvement. The right approach and metrics will also reassure you that you’ve made the right choice in implementing test automation in the first place.

The best test automation approach will always include the kind of KPI metrics that let you gauge the health, quality, and progress of your QA testing. You want signs that you’re on track to maximize your ROI. It’s like having a reassuring teammate at your side telling you everything is going to work out. You get that kind of reassurance when your QA approach keeps your core purpose, needs, and plans at the forefront of every phase of testing.

That said, the must-take automation approach and must-have metrics will vary depending on your organization’s needs and goals. Let’s look at how you can make the best decision to support both.

Find the Best Test Automation Approach

The quickest way to arrive at your development destination is to plot the right pathway. That starts with reaffirming why you’ve chosen to implement test automation, namely to:

Achieve better quality;

Get more QA coverage; and

Save time and release faster.

With the right QA partner, you should be able to find the perfect frameworks and language to suit your specific domain and your specific platforms and goals. The overall automation approach, however, will follow these four key phases:

1) Identify Project Requirements

It all begins with a comprehensive meeting between your key staff and your QA partner. Here you will define the product knowledge, project architecture, and methodology to take you right through the release cycle.

2) Outline a Strategy and Identify the Right Tools

At this stage your QA partner’s knowledge of test automation frameworks and approaches becomes crucial. It is the point where you decide how to create test cases and shape the testing interface, define a strategy to identify necessary test elements, and where you will agree on generating and vetting all the necessary test data.

3) Build a Framework and Create Scripts

4) Provide a Demonstration and Full Reporting

The automation team presents the final framework, tests, and complete reports. They will also provide training and guides to ensure your internal QA team and engineers can execute tests in the future.

It takes a good deal of experience and expertise to carry a QA process through to the release stage. In order to make sure everything is running as it should and you are heading in the right direction, you must establish the right kind of metrics.

Find the Best Test Automation Metrics

Test automation metrics are your way of looking inside the QA process to make sure all is well within your software development. Get it right and they should provide that reassurance we mentioned earlier and leave you with a sense of control over the project.

There are many, many metrics available, however, and choosing those that will provide real insight is critical. Too often we go in search of answer to vague questions like Is this improving the quality of the product? What is really needed is a targeted approach that actually identifies what is working and what needs to be improved.

For a start, you need to consider your specific framework and test automation suite before you attempt any sort of metric reconnaissance. That is going to be an individual process you take on in close cooperation with your QA outsourcing partner, but you can use the points below as a good guide to the kinds of KPIs you should be chasing.

Metrics to Track Your QA Process

These are some of the best test automation metrics we have used:

Percent of test automatable

Automation progress

Percent of automated test coverage

Automated suite execution time vs. manual execution time

P1 features automation coverage

Fake failures

Script maintenance time

Automated software testing ROI

That is based on more than a thousand years of combined testing experience, and more than a million test cases automated. These metrics should supplement, not supplant, the KPIs you already include in your own assessments.

The Best Test Automation Approach and Metrics

Adopting the best test automation approach and metrics will make sure you set off along the right path to successful delivery, and that you stay on it until you have a quality product in hand.

That involves clearly defining and maintaining your core project goals right from the initial planning phase, and then implementing KPIs that can effectively let you know if you are meeting those targets.

These days automation is playing a major role in Agile software development. As the dev team completes features, automation teams build tests that account for the new code. This helps in quick delivery of automation tests and immediate verification of features—so you find defects at early stage and learn how robust your product's new features really are.

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Written by QA Experts

QASource Blog, for executives and managers, shares QA strategies, methodologies, and new ideas to inform and help effectively deliver quality products, websites, and applications.

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QASource exists to help organizations like yours enjoy the benefits of a full QA department without the associated setup cost and hassle. With an emphasis on time-bound delivery and customized solutions, we excel at helping our partners manage the quality of their deliverables while keeping costs low.

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